Garth Rempel, Music Teacher

Doing the right thing

(TEXT FROM SOUND BITE)

"My greatest personal accomplishment is being able to find that place within myself that I needed to be. I really do feel like I'm in the right job and I feel like I'm doing the right thing. To me that's amazing, took me a long time to get here but through all of the stuff that I had to sift through to find this, am I ever glad.

"Whatever the circumstances were that led me here and the decisions that I had to make to lead me here, that's worth something."

Images from my workplace

Where I work

I work as a music teacher for the River East Transcona School Division at Valley Gardens Junior High, located in North Kildonan in Winnipeg. The total staff is around 50 including approximately 35 certified teachers.

We serve quite a diverse area. We are surrounded by some subsidized housing, while just around the corner there are some quarter of a million dollar houses so the students come from a very wide range of backgrounds. There are a lot of students of East Indian culture well as some Aboriginal and Filipino students.

School is unique

(TEXT FROM SOUND BITE)

"We're in a transition phase from a junior high school into a middle school. We're graduating two classes and moving from a grade seven and eight and senior one environment to a grade six, seven and eight environment, which makes us unique.

"The layout of the school is quite unique among junior high schools. (It) has a very dedicated Expressive and Applied Arts wing separate from the academic areas of the school. We have a huge wood shop and a huge Graphic Arts area combined with a full Home Economics area."

Sole music teacher

I am the only Music teacher in the building, so my job is to deliver the musical options available, which is a choice between band and guitar.

I also have a role as a teacher advisor in the building, which means I have a homeroom that sees me twice a day. I deliver morning announcements; I help them track their report cards and their grades and I deal with parents in matters of discipline and other issues.

Band parents

Teachers tend to deal with parents if there is an issue with students. So parents get to know that if we're not on the phone to them that things are going pretty well.

This year I created a band parents' association for parents who wanted to help and support the music programs within the school by doing some fundraising and some offering personnel support and organizational capabilities. That band parent association is where I have the most contact with parents.

Physical work

Believe it or not, being a band teacher is fairly physical. I often have kids complaining about how cold it is in my room and I rarely notice it. I'm usually sweating because I'm on my feet and teaching about music,

Talking about music requires a great deal of passion, a great deal of energy. So I'm moving all the time, II talk with my hands, I'm constantly waving my arms around as I'm conducting, or I'm playing an instrument, which requires effort.

I do have a stool that I sit on sometimes but I spend 85 percent of my day on my feet.

Music for fun

(TEXT FROM SOUND BITE)

"Up until last year, I had been playing fairly regularly in local bar bands. I was at the head of the last band that I was in and I found myself in the position where I didn't really have the time or the energy to do that. Now, if somebody phones me and needs me for a one-time deal then I'll go and rehearse a couple times and do that.

"As my kids get older, then I will get back into playing regularly because I really do miss it. Playing music for the sake of playing music is an important part of my life."

Growing up

I was born and raised in Winnipeg and lived in Winnipeg all but for my fifth and sixth years of my life, where I lived in southern Ontario. I mostly grew up in the St. James area.

My family was a typical one-income, two-kid family. My sister is four and a half years older than I am. My dad worked for IBM and when he was very busy, often left for work at six o'clock and didn't come home until six o'clock. My mom was home for most of our younger life and went back to work part-time as we got older. We were always comfortable financially.

Married with kids

I'm married with two children. We just celebrated our sixth anniversary. My daughter Anna is starting kindergarten this year. My son Kevin is three and a half. We live in North Kildonan and we're quite happy where we are.

My wife is works for the home care system, managing some of the service staff so we're a two-income family, with our kids in a daycare. We all seem to be fairly happy with the arrangements right now.

Playing and fixing

I spend as much time as I can with our children, getting them outside, playing games and crafts and all of the fun things that you can do with kids.

When I get time for myself, I play a little bit of golf and play as much music as I can. I also like to tinker around with auto mechanics and doing things around the house. When I built our garage a few years ago, I saved several thousand dollars building it myself and I had a heck of a good time doing it.

Collects instruments

I buy instruments when I can afford it. I have five guitars of various types. I own two electric guitars, a fairly new Fender Stratocaster and an old Washburn Les Paul copy. I have a beautiful hand-built classical guitar, built here in Winnipeg and an old Yamaha acoustic steel string that I inherited from my dad. I think he bought it in 1972. And I have a beautiful old Fender Precision bass as well.

I also have an electric piano that I use for composing and working out piano arrangements. We also have a trumpet and a French horn.

Before school

(TEXT FROM SOUND BITE)

"A typical day sees me getting out of bed at shortly after 6:00 in the morning. I putter around and make coffee and get the lunches ready and breathe some life into the household. Mornings are often quiet and fairly rushed here ‘cause we all stay in bed until we absolutely have to get up.

"We usually leave the house at 7:15. I drop the two kids off at their daycare and head for school by about 7:30. That gives me a little over an hour before the school day starts. Some days I have a rehearsal in this time. Other days I just use that time for planning and getting myself organized."

Six day cycle

My schedule is dictated by the school day calendar. Valley Gardens operates on a six-day cycle, so the students that I see any given day and most of my extra rehearsals and other things I coordinate are dictated by that cycle.

I do have some prep periods within the six-day cycle, periods where I don't have a class to teach. This is my time to chase around the school and take care of all the other administrative details of planning that I can do.

Rushed lunch

I'm committed to doing something almost every lunch hour but that's my choice. If you're going to be a music teacher, you have to be prepared to put in that extra time because you just can't get it all done in the time that's allotted to you.

I do eat but I wind up eating my lunch while I'm talking to kids or while I'm running back and forth between my room and the staff room. That isn't the healthiest practice. In next year's schedule I hope to have fifteen minutes to sit down and eat something.

Very fast pace

The pace is definitely fast. The stresses come from the sheer number of decisions that I have to make in the time that I have. New stuff is being thrown at me all the time, and I have to deal to with it.

I find sometimes that when I have a prep time, if I sit down for a minute and look around and think about what I have to do, I may sit there for too long. It's easy to let the pace slow a little bit and then I don't get nearly as much done. I'm sure not gaining any weight because I run around a lot.

Balance time

My challenge right now is to balance my time. Over the last three years of university, I worked two or three part-time jobs while going to school full-time with our young family at home.

This year I'm enjoying being home more in the evenings. I'm at school for a good ten hours every day but when I leave, I try to come home and take part of the family activities. There are times when that work needs to come home, at the end of reporting periods or if there's a concert coming up, but mostly I think I'm doing pretty well.

Magical work

(TEXT FROM SOUND BITE)

"Music education has so many benefits about responsibility and accountability and teamwork and being able to succeed and appreciating an art form. All of these things which are just so vital to our society. Even if the kid never touches an instrument again after I'm done teaching them, they've still got a little taste of these things.

Music makes you think about the world in a way that no other subject makes you think about it. There's rhythm in your body all the time; and I get to teach these kids how to tap into that. It's just so magical."

Creative and fun

There is never a dull moment on my job. There are lots of opportunities to play and be creative. That's our choice as teachers. We stand up in front of the class and say, "Today, boys and girls, we're going" or we can get up there and have some fun.

But we can't always just have fun. It doesn't quite work that way. Sometimes I have to put my foot down and be the heavy, but I also tell jokes and we have fun and we tell silly stories and have as much fun as we possibly can.

No down time

My biggest challenge is the lack of down time. In most other jobs, you've got a fifteen minute coffee break and you can put everything aside and just stop for a little bit, or if you're having a really rough time with something you leave it for a while and come back to it a few minutes later.

I can't do that. If I'm in the middle of a class and there's a kid that's giving me a whole lot of grief and I have another instrument broken over here, I have to deal with that; I can't walk away and leave it.

Keep it interesting

I am constantly looking for ways to keep what I'm telling the kids interesting and that's harder on some days than it is on other days.

If you're trying to tell a kid why they need to have seven different scales memorized that's a pretty big thing you're asking them to do. I have to try to find that and try to find a way to make that interesting, find a way to make that doable, find a way to make it relevant. That's a big here's challenge too.

When it's not working

The biggest stressor for me is when a lesson is not working. If I've decided with my grade eight concert band that we're going to do a piece and really going focus in on the middle section and it's three quarters of the way through the class and we're only halfway through that middle section, that stresses me out. Sometimes it's because the kids don't get the concept, sometimes it's because they're too wound up and they're not paying attention.

When that happens, sometimes I just have to take a deep breath and let it go.

Always a teacher

(TEXT FROM SOUND BITE)

"I've been teaching since I was in high school. I started teaching private guitar lessons before I graduated.

"In my academic classes, school came fairly easily to me. Because I was getting concepts before some of the others, it allowed me time to help other people. I was told by a number of my teachers that I would probably be a good teacher. I was resistant to this at the time."

Change of plan

I was in the International Baccalaureate Program in high school and there was a lot of pressure on me to go to university. I didn't know what I really wanted to do so I went into Engineering just because my highest marks were in Math and Physics.

After I decided that this wasn't the career I wanted my parents were very supportive. When I decided to go into music, they helped me finance instruments, made sure I had practice space available and helped me cover tuition costs. They also supported me as I went through the Faculty of Education.

Inspired at funeral

After I finished my Music degree, I wanted to write commercial music. Around that time, my dad asked me to attend a funeral of his friend who had been a music teacher. I went and heard all these people speak about how this teacher had touched their lives in some way.

I'd always shied away from being a public school music teacher because it's a high-stress job. But when I heard all about this man, I thought, wow, maybe this is something I'd really like to do. And when I had my first student teaching experience, I immediately fell in love with it.

Long winding road

My biggest challenges were finding out who I was and where I needed to go. I'm 29 and I'm in my first year of teaching so it was a fairly long road to land where I am now. Had I known then some of the things I know now, I probably would have arrived here quite a bit sooner.

I would have liked to discover how great this was earlier, so that I could have started this earlier. I would have gone straight into the Faculty of Music right out of high school and been teaching by the time I was 23. But there's no way of seeing that far ahead and I have no regrets about the things I did do.

Other job skills

Every job I've had, I've learned with some valuable skills. I worked for three years in a retail environment at a store called the House of Knives where I learned the ins and outs of kitchen cutlery. After three summers working for a lawn care company, I can look after my own yard.

Working in sawmills and lumberyards, I learned about wood and got a lot of experience with building materials. Operating a forklift is a phenomenal exercise in spatial perception and definitely overcame any fears I had of operating any sort of a vehicle.

Make my mark

(TEXT FROM SOUND BITE)

"I want to pass on this love for music that I have to as many people as is humanly possible. I want to grow and sustain the program that I'm working on at this school and in whatever other school where I happen to work in my future.

"In five years I'd like to see myself still at this school, but with a firmly established program with really consistent numbers in, consistent numbers out and consistent results on the kids that are coming out to make sure that I can make my mark there and make my presence felt."

Staying here

I'm planning to stay in Manitoba because this is where my home is; this is where the bulk of my family is and this is the place that I know. None of the other major cities in Canada hold as much appeal to me as Winnipeg does.

There are a number of reasons I want to stay, like cost of living, housing, accessibility to job prospects and proximity to my family and the things that I love. I don't have the itch to move. We're quite happy where we are.

Heroes

My personal heroes are some of the teachers that I've had throughout my life. I had a Math Teacher in high school whose whole approach to teaching Math and to teaching kids was so magical that even at fifteen years old, I knew he was a great teacher right then.

My mentors, the collaborating teachers that I had through the Faculty of Education process, are also incredibly gifted people. They are very passionate about passing on learning to other people in a variety of ways.

Advice to students

The only way to know if teaching is a good thing for you is to do it, even if that's peer tutoring in high school. If you plan to be a music teacher, keep your options open and never stop learning. When you're choosing courses in high school, try to keep things broad and general for as long as you can.

You will need experience with lots of different musical instruments in all kinds of musical performance situations. You will also need to be adaptable, and have a dynamic personality, strong organizational skills and solid references.

Future of profession

The future outlook for music teaching is good as long as we can maintain a positive interest in our programs. We need to make sure that we are making ourselves visible and convincing.

We need to show the people who support us, both the public and our administration, the value of what we're doing in that classroom. As long as we're able to do that, then the outlook is really quite positive.

Job market info

The official title for Garth's occupation is "Secondary School Teachers" and its NOC* code is 4141.

Manitoba Job Futures

Manitoba Labour Market Information - Who Hires?

*Each occupation has an official name and unique number called the 'National Occupation Classification' code or 'NOC'.

Education

High School

Useful high school courses*

- English
- Math
- Social Studies
- Science
- Music (added)

* Source: Job Futures.ca

For those out of school, Adult Learning Centres can help you get or upgrade your high school diploma, including adding subjects that are required for work or further education. All Manitobans are normally entitled to 4 free courses.

After high school

University of Manitoba

Faculty of Education

University of Winnipeg

Faculty of Education

Collège Universitaire de St. Boniface

Faculté d'éducation Baccalauréat en éducation voie secondaire (deux ans)

Brandon University

Department of Education

Canadian Mennonite University

Pre-professional program in Education
Prepares students to enter Education programs at other universities

Skills

Useful Experience/Skills*

- Leadership
- Interpersonal skills
- Teamwork
- Curriculum familiarity

Source: Job Futures.ca

There is not yet an Essential Skills* profile for this occupation.

*For more information on Essential Skills and their importance, go to the Essential Skills web site .

Professional resources

Manitoba Teacher's Society
Represents the 14,000 public school teachers in Manitoba

Manitoba Band Association
A non-profit charitable organization promoting the growth and development of band programs in Manitoba, through regional and provincial programs and activities

Association des éducatrices et des éducateurs franco-manitobains
191, rue Hartcourt, Winnipeg, MB, R3J 3H2
Represents the interests of Franco-Manitoban teachers

Winnipeg Jewish Schools Teachers' Association
A200-123 Doncaster Street, Winnipeg, MB, R3N 2B4
Represents the interests of Hebrew school teachers

Professional Certification Manitoba

Apply to Teach

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